About km4dev.org

KM4Dev is a community of international development practitioners who are interested in knowledge management and knowledge sharing issues and approaches, and who seek to share ideas and experiences in this domain.

Origins

The community traces its origins back to two face-to-face workshops held respectively inFebruaryandJune2000. Participants from the two workshops wanted to continue discussing among themselves and asked Bellanet / IDRC to create an electronic forum where this could take place. The KM4Devmailing listandwebsitecame to be in the summer of 2000. To subscribe to the KM4Dev main discussion forum on dGroups, send a blank email to: join.km4dev-l[@]dgroups.org.

A volunteer Core Group was created in May 2004 to further support the community and help respond to its needs.

Support

The KM4Dev community - aside from being sustained and steered by the energy of numerous and ongoing volunteer efforts of many people within the community itself - is pleased to acknowledge targeted support over the years from the following sources:

SDC- Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation provided funding for facilitation of the community and its continuing move toward greater engagement of its southern-based members, as well as for exploration of possibilities to enhance KM4Dev's communication and information resources.

IDRC - International Development Research Centre has funded the transition of KM4Dev's internet-based resources from Bellanet to full KM4Dev community management.

Helvetas - the Swiss Association for International Cooperation, in partnership with Skat, coordinated SDC and IDRC support, and overseeing community facilitation (provided by KM4D Associates), website hosting (at GreenNet), and exploration of consolidation of technical infrastructure to better serve the community's needs. Helvetas as of early 2014 still provides this support.

As a community, KM4Dev has evolved following these supporting principles:

Open and interactive in nature;

Supporting and encouraging a mix of individuals (northern and southern participation; large and small organizations; academics and practitioners; male and female);

(International) development is the specific, underlying context to our exploration of KM/KS issues and approaches.

KM4Dev members regularly undertake specific projects linked to their own interests. In some cases, we hope and manage to obtain funding to support the development of the community and its resources. Click here to find out about the current KM4Dev Working Groups, sub-groups and projects.

The KM4Dev community organizes face-to-face workshops; these regular events (aiming at at least one per year) have served to bring together development practitioners to discuss and share their ideas and experiences related to KM. This community is fueled by the energy and enthusiasm of its members and the KM4Dev Core group welcomes members taking initiative of hosting and organizing events. If you - or your organization - are interested in organizing or hosting an event, please read the following KM4Dev events guidelines.

Journal

Linked to the community is the KM4D Journal. It focuses on KM in development, which includes diverse knowledge management approaches in development organizations, large and small, in the South and in the North. Offering practice-based cases, analysis and research concerning the role of knowledge in development processes, it provides a forum for debate and exchange of ideas among practitioners, policy makers, academics and activists world-wide, and is a peer-reviewed, open access e-journal. The peer reviewers are usually members of the Journal’s Editorial Board. Online issues are guest edited by members of the community, with the assistance of the Editors. The current issue can be found here.

To find out how you can be involved in the KM4Dev community, you may write to the Core group at KM4DevCoregroup[@]dgroups.org.